Re: UI Guidelines: Dialogs

[Liam Quin <liam holoweb net>]

> David Grega wrote:
>> How about a rule that when a user is entering data into a single-line text
>> box (where the enter key serves basically no purpose), if the user presses
>> enter, it is treated as if the user pressed the tab key.

On Fri, Feb 16, 2001 at 11:01:56AM +0000, Calum Benson wrote:
> Yes, that's probably a reasonable sort of rule.  (I forget off the top
> of my head what the Mac and Windows styleguides recommend, it may be
> just that, in fact.)

Windows might, on the mac the keys aern't supposed to be context sensitive.

The Sun/AT&T Open look style guide said that Enter/return should take
you down a dlog one field at a time and then finally take you to the
default action button, then would do the default action.

That seemed to work fairly well, until multi-line fields were
introduced, and then there's the problem of getting "stuck" in them.

Calum again:
> Even that rule has its exceptions, though, e.g. if the dialog only
> contains a single text field and OK/Cancel buttons (such as a "rename
> file" dialog).  Then you'd probably just want to type into the field,
> press Enter and have the dialog disappear immediately

I think being consistent is more important, people get used to the idea
that they press return at the end of a line and don't expect it to
press a button right away.

The OL style guide a mentioned was precise enough (together with a
specification document) that there were at least 6 separate toolkits
that all interoperated, from at least 3 separate vendors.  One problem
is that this can make changes harder; one benefit is that applications
work better and the user gets the experience of an integrated desktop.

Part of a successful toolkit is implementing enough "policy" that most
programmers, even rushed, underpaid, disinterested ones, will get
thngs more or less right. Navigation in dialogues is a good example
of this; providing drag and drop from/to all text entries is another.

Lee

-- 
Liam Quin - Barefoot in Toronto - liam holoweb net - http://www.holoweb.net/
Ankh: irc.sorcery.net www.valinor.sorcery.net irc.gnome.org www.advogato.org
author, The Open Source XML Database Toolkit, Wiley, August 2000
Co-author, The XML Specification Guide, Wiley, 1999